Are you ready for Twitter?

October 4, 2009 at 11:58 am · Filed under Weeklies ·Tagged distraction, OrCom, organizational communication, personal branding, Twitter, UP Manila

Are you really ready for Twitter?

Your friends just signed up for Twitter. They start doing practically everything there–exchange gossips, share stories, links, and others and

you feel left out most of the time. And now they are even following your favorite celeb hotties. So you go to Twitter.com and you click

the Sign up now tab.

If the above scenario seems familiar to you, then you are one of the many people (and even businesses!) who sign up for Twitter and other similar sites due to “fear factor” (http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2009/07/companies-dont-fall-for-social-medias.html).

This is not good because maintaining an online account is like having a pet bird (lovebird, mynah, parrot, whatever!).

* You can leave it once in a while but you definitely have to feed it (with your updates) or it will die.

* It won’t bug you if you haven’t fed it for a while, but it will just die down on its own.

* If you want it to be healthy, you have to feed it well (with quality, relevant, and useful updates).

So even when all your friends have their own pets already, you can’t just dive into the same thing just so you can relate. You need

something more than that for you to sustain whatever you will start.

Here’s a rundown of things that you need to ask if you are in doubt about signing up for Twitter.

1. Do you have a lot of useful information to share to the world?

2. Are the people you want to share those information with on Twitter?

3. Are the people in #2 unreachable in other platforms (like IM, Gtalk, or Facebook)?

4. Do you really want the world to share what you are doing every time (even where you are tweeting from http://blog.twitter.com/2009/08/location-location-location.html) to quite a number of people?

5. Do you really want to know about what other people are doing/up to in real time (as they update)?

6. Do you have a big, diverse, and scattered network such that friends from the same group/organization/school/company cannot be

reached in the same site?

7. Do you want to establish your online presence in different platforms as a way of building and maintaining your online reputation?

8. Are you open minded and can you take comments or criticisms lightly and positively?

9. Are you capable of dropping constructive comments to other people as well?

10. Do you know how to manage your time well?

If you answered mostly yes, then go ahead and click here (https://twitter.com/signup) to sign up. I am almost sure that Twitter will be of help to you.

If you answered mostly no, then your time is better off spent somewhere else. You surely don’t need another distraction to keep you from

finishing your tasks.

I hope you find the above list helpful.

Your friends just signed up for Twitter. Since then, they started doing practically everything there–exchange gossips, share stories, links, and others and you feel left out most of the time. And now they are even following your favorite celeb hotties. So you go to Twitter.com and you click the Sign up now tab.

If the above scenario seems familiar to you, then you are one of the many people (and even businesses!) who sign up for Twitter and other similar sites due to “fear factor” .

This is not good because maintaining an online account is like having a pet bird (lovebird, cockatoo, parrot, whatever!). You cannot just take one at home and expect it to  grow on its own.

• You can leave it once in a while but you definitely have to feed it (with your updates) or it will die.
• It won’t bug you if you haven’t fed it for days, but it will surely die a slow and sad death.
• If you want it to be healthy, you have to feed it well (with quality, relevant, and useful updates).

This is why even when all your friends have their own pets already, you can’t just dive into the same thing just so you can relate. You need something more than peer pressure for you to sustain whatever online account that you will start.

So here’s a rundown of things that you need to ask if you are in doubt about signing up for Twitter:

1. Do you have a lot of useful information to share to the world?

2. Are the people you want to share those information with on Twitter?

3. Are the people in #2 unreachable in other platforms (like IM, Gtalk, or Facebook)?

4. Do you really want the world to share what you are doing every time (even where your location is) to quite a number of people?

5. Do you really want to know about what other people are doing/up to in real time (as they update)?

6. Do you have a big, diverse, and scattered network such that friends from the same group/organization/school/company cannot be reached in the same site?

7. Do you want to establish your online presence in different platforms as a way of building and maintaining your online reputation?

8. Are you open minded and can you take comments or criticisms lightly and positively?

9. Are you capable of dropping constructive comments to other people as well?

10. Do you know how to manage your time well?

If you answered mostly yes, then go ahead and click here to sign up. I am almost sure that Twitter will be of help to you.

If you answered mostly no, then your time is better off spent somewhere else. You surely don’t need another distraction to keep you from finishing your tasks.

I hope you find the above list helpful.

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